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The chief and almost sole source of Coriolanus, as of Shakespeare's other Roman plays, is North's translation of Plutarch's Lives, which was first printed in 1579 and reached its third edition in 1603. About 550 lines of North's prose are woven into the text of Coriolanus, and the verbal adherence of the poet to the translator is even closer than it is in the earlier Plutarchan plays of Julius Cæsar and Antony and Cleopatra. The two principal characters, Coriolanus and Volumnia, owe most to Plutarch, though Shakespeare has given to each of them distinguishing traits hardly implied by his original. Virgilia, Menenius, and the Tribunes, on the other hand, are developed out of very slight suggestions. North only once mentions Virgilia's name and affords us no clue to her character. He says nothing of Menenius' friendship for Coriolanus, and names him only in the following account of his famous fable:

When the Plebeians were threatening to withdraw from Rome, North says: 'The Senate, being afeared of their departure, did send unto them certain of the pleasantest old men and the most acceptable to the people among them. Of those Menenius Agrippa was he who was sent for chief man of the message from the Senate. He, after many good persuasions and gentle requests made to the people on the behalf of the Senate, knit up his oration in the end with a notable tale, in this manner. That on a time all the members of man's body did rebel against the belly, complaining of it, that it only remained in the midst of the body, without doing anything, neither did bear any labour to the maintenance of the rest: whereas all other parts